Education

1989-1993  Shandong University, Department of Microbiology, Jinan, China,  Bachelor

1993-1996  Shandong University, Department of Microbiology, Jinan, China, Master

2001-2004  German Research Center for Biotechnology (GBF), Braunschweig, Germany, Biotechnology, PhD

2004-2008  Helmoholz Center for Infection Research (former GBF), Braunschweig, Germany, Lab of Systems Biotechnology, Post-doctoral

Professional Experience

1996-2000   National Key Lab of Microbial Technology, Shandong University, Jinan, China, Lecturer

Since 2008   Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology, Chinese Academy ofSciences (TIB/CAS), Tianjin, China, Professor

Since 2011   Deputy Director of the Key Laboratory of Systems Microbial Biotechnology, CAS

Since 2012   Deputy Director of TIB/CAS

Awards

Excellent doctoral thesis award of GBF foundation, Germany (2005)

Research Interest

We focus on systems biology of industrial microorganisms. The diverse microorganisms from industrial practices are invaluable to understand the biological basis for efficient industrial processes and essential for designing next-generation cell factories for the coming era of bioindustry. We are devoted to developing and improving systems and synthetic biology toolboxes to understand the hyper-production mechanisms and metabolic and regulatory bottlenecks of industrial strains, to reconfiguring the industrial bugs or creating new cell factories by computational design and genome-scale metabolic engineering to gain better production performance for amino acid, organic acid and related chemicals.

Fig: Research focus, positioning and strategy

Selected Publications

1.    Zixiang Xu, Xiao Sun, Jibin Sun. Construction and Analysis of the Model of EnergyMetabolism in E. coli. PLOS ONE2013,8(1):e55137

2.    Feng Geng , Zhen Chen, Ping Zheng , Jibin Sun ,An-Ping Zeng. Exploring the allosteric mechanism of dihydrodipicolinatesynthase by reverse engineering of the allosteric inhibitorbinding sites and its application for lysine production. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 2013, 97:1963-1971.

3.    Yan Zhu, Jiangning Song, Zixiang Xu, Jibin Sun,Yanping Zhang,Yin Li,Yanhe Ma. Development of Thermodynamic OptimumSearching (TOS) to Improve the PredictionAccuracy of Flux Balance Analysis. Biotechnol Bioeng 2013,110(3):914-923

4.    Lilu Zhang, Jiuzhou Chen, Ning Chen1, Jibin Sun, Ping Zheng, Yanhe Ma. Cloning of two 5-Aminolevulinic Acid Synthase Isozymes HemA and HemO from Rhodopseudomonas palustris with favorable characters for 5-aminolevulinic acid production. Biotechnology Letters 2013, 35:763–768.

5.    Lin Chen, Zhen Chen, Ping Zheng, Jibin Sun, An-Ping Zeng. Study and reengineering of the binding sites and allostericregulation of biosynthetic threonine deaminase by isoleucineand valine in Escherichia coli. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 2013, 97:2939-49.